Tuesday, July 17, 2012

Hey Hermano

Ok, technically they are brother and sister but you get the idea.
the other week I was in quilting mode and I wanted to work with an unusual-for-me color combo, pink and grey. i pulled a stack of fabrics and made a simple vertical strip quilt top. i pillaged the scrap bins for pink, white, black, and grey strings and made 4 wonky log cabin blocks for the back.
i used scraps for the entire backing. even the various shades of grey are leftover from other projects. i use grey a lot so i had a lot of scraps to choose from. i improv pieced the back with the 4 wonky log cabins. the binding is a dashed stripe from a walk in the woods.
for the quilting, i wanted something simple and i wanted to utilize my new favorite quilting stitch, the scallop. i used bright pink essential cotton thread.

then i thought it would be fun to make a boy companion to the sister quilt so i pulled blue and orange fabrics. i went with a horizontal orientation this time for the top. i quilted random wavy lines with white gutermann thread.
for the back i made wonky string blocks. this time i kept the paper on when i stitched the blocks together and my corners have never looked nicer. it was kind of a pain to remove the paper afterwards but worth it in the end. i pulled light colored scraps for the backing, including white, snow, bone, khaki, stone, and ash. i really love the different shades together in an improv pieced back. the binding is also scrappy and i love the look. i wish i had used it on the girl quilt as well.
the batting for both quilts is quilter's dream wool, which is definitely my new favorite. they are so lightweight and lofty, like they could float away. i love wool so much that it makes sense that i'd love it as quilt batting too. both quilts are around 40x48-ish, though the boy quilt is a little bigger than the girl version.

so i didn't make these quilts for any particular reason, though i might sell them eventually. they helped me scratch a particular kind of itch and i got to work with scraps. the scrap bins never seem to get any smaller though. entropy at work.